Mobile communication devices (MCDs) communicate wirelessly with other devices, such as base towers. Data is often transmitted to an MCD using paging blocks, which are known in the art. A paging block may be sent in increments known as “bursts.” Many applications require that the MCD decode these bursts as they arrive, instead of waiting for the entire paging block to be received. Such decoding benefits from an accurate determination of the bit error rate (BER), but, unfortunately, accurately determining the BER in such applications is difficult.